I am blown away by all of the suggestions you guys sent us! Y’all gave this some serious thought! I couldn’t believe the well-thought out plans y’all left in comments. A few of you even sent me floor plan sketches, which was so awesome! Chris and I went through each one and they were super helpful in deciding how we wanted to proceed.

First off, I think some of you thought we weren’t adding on or were adding on a tiny bit. I totally get that from my comment about our decision to put less into this house. For clarification, our initial plan when we were thinking of this as a “forever house” was to make it a decent amount larger than our current home (i.e. 2,000 or more square feet). We were adding a two-story addition with a double garage, bigger bedrooms, and really good size common spaces.

While we realized that isn’t the plan for now, we’re still adding on a good bit and changing a lot! This house is 740 square feet after all! Our goal now is to have enough space to stay as long as we’d like, but not a lot of extra and no garage. That saves us tons!

Before seeing the new floor plan, here’s a little background info on our addition goals:

Our goal with the addition was to get the extra square footage we needed and spend as little as possible. We decided to make the house around the size of our current house at 1,500 square feet. So, we’re doubling the current square footage.

The size of our current house has worked well for us, but this new house is laid out better, so I think it will feel even bigger! The main spaces are larger and more usable.

Where to add on was a big consideration. If you remember, there’s room for additions on both sides of the house. A lot of you suggested adding on the left side and doing a two-story addition with a garage or basement underneath.

For budget reasons, our addition needed to stay on the upper slop of our lot.

While adding on a two-story addition would be really nice, it’s soooooo much more costly. That extra foundation is super expensive! So, we wanted to keep our addition on the upper level (even with the current house) to save majorly on foundation costs.

Once, we knew that we could add down the right side of the house and some along the back, that helped us to start nailing down our plans for the layout of the space.

We really wanted a larger living room, good size kitchen, and open floor plan. We also really wanted those main living spaces on the back of the house since that’s where we spend all of our time and we want it to connect to outdoor living space. We also wanted to add tons of built-ins and maximize storage as much as possible. That’s a frustration in our current house.

So, with all of those goals in mind, we made a plan.

As a reminder, here’s the current footprint of the house:

And here’s our new layout:

That may be hard to tell exactly what we’re doing. In this floor plan below, the current house is pink, so you can easily see what’s added.

Here’s a list/breakdown of what’s changing:

1.) Moving front door – we’re moving the front door from the current living room and into the into the existing window in the room to the right (current dining room).

2.) Extending Front Porch – the front porch will now extend past the new front door, which leaves a good size sitting space to the left of the front door.

3.) Living Room to Bedroom – the current living room is now going to be a bedroom. So, now the two bedrooms are side-by-side and off the same hallway. They’re right by the guest bath, so that works well. And both bedrooms have little fireplaces, which is really neat! We’re closing up the cased opening that was between the living and dining room and bumping out a small closet right inside the front door.

4.) Maintaining Current Bed and Bath – a lot of you suggested ways to expand the current back bedroom, which I would love to do. But there isn’t a budget conscious way to do that with the two-story foundation issue. It’s the same size as both of our current bedrooms ( nursery and guest room), so it’ll work perfectly as a nursery. By maintaining the walls and current layout of this space, we’re saving a lot of money that we can put into the main areas. We’ll be using the current bathroom layout (including all plumbing), which will save a lot too and it functions fine.

5.) Creating an Entry/Mudroom – I really didn’t want to come in the front door and immediately be greeted by a dining table. I wanted an entry space where we could have a coat closet and drop spots for keys, coats, etc. So, if you look right inside the front door, there’s a little bump out that creates the closet for the living turned bedroom. We’re mirroring that on the other end of the entry with a coat closet and will build a bench that spans the space in between. This will be a functional, but pretty space.

6.) Adding a Laundry – one thing that was desperately lacking was a laundry room. We have a laundry closet in our current home and wanted a bigger laundry room with counter and hanging space.

7.) Office Nook – the laundry bump out in that front room leaves a space to the right that will be a perfect little office nook. I’m still figuring out a way to create some sort of visual barrier between this and the front door, but a must in this house for me was to have a permanent office space that wasn’t in a guest room. We really need three functioning bedrooms: one for master, one for nursery, and one for guest room. That third bedroom will be for the next little Buffalo Baby, so I wanted an office space that wouldn’t be changed or touched by any of those things. It’s small, but it’ll be perfect for a desk and a little storage. This wasn’t enough of a “must” to add extra addition for it, so this little nook left after the laundry addition is the perfect spot.

8.) Central Hallway and Sight Line – One of my very favorite parts about this is the sight line from the front door to the kitchen in the back of the house. It’s not one big open room, which I didn’t want. But it is open and you can see to the back. I also love that there’s a hallway space connecting our bedroom to the kids’ rooms. The laundry door is also off this space.

9.) Master Suite Addition – the master will be added down the full depth of the right side of the house. The current side exterior door (off the current little mudroom) will be the door into our master suite. Along the front of the house, you’ll see two closets flanking a window with a built-in bench in between. These closets will be for Chris and there will be a little extra storage there for linens and such. The closet you see by the bath is my walk-in. I love that Chris’ insists on his and hers closets! I am THRILLED about our master bath! It will have a standing tiled shower and the claw foot tub I’ve always dreamed of!

10.) Dining Room – the dining room will be the current second bedroom. This is a pass-through to the addition, so I decided to put the dining area as far to the right wall as possible, creating a designated walk-through space (central hallway). To do that, I’m planning to do a built-in banquette between two built-ins (think butler’s pantry style) to store dishes, candlesticks, table linens, etc. The banquette saves me a good bit of space since you won’t need chair and walking clearance on that side. I’m considering “designating” this space with two columns. I really want it to feel like a separate dining room, but am not willing to close it up with walls. That would ruin our open floor plan and the sight line into the main living spaces. Columns would give it some visual definition, but we’re still deciding on these.

11.) Kitchen – I’m so excited about this kitchen! I really wanted the kitchen opening straight into the living room. That layout works really well for us now. Adding both onto the back meant that these spaces are open to outdoor entertaining areas, which was really important for our lifestyle and entertaining. Plus, adding on these spaces meant we could lay it out just as we like. The kitchen will have two long walls of cabinets with a big eat-in island. The only little issue here is lack of a pantry space, but I didn’t want to bump out a closet. So, we’ll be doing a floor-to-ceiling cabinet with shelves somewhere for pantry space.

12.) Living Room – The living room will have a fireplace, four windows on two walls for lots of natural light, and a really long wall of built-ins! I have loved having a wall of built-ins in our current living room, so I want to continue that.

So, there you have it, y’all! I’m so excited about this layout and have already started trying to design the spaces. The renovation has already begun and I’ll share a current-progress update later this week. We’ve got four months until Move-in Day, so we’re moving quickly!

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New follower here and I’m super excited to follow along during your renovations! I know that most blogger don’t like disclosing financial aspects and that every market is different but I was just curious if you would be able to provide ranges on how your money will be spent. We are planning a renovation soonish which will include a master bedroom addition and a full kitchen remodel. Having some perspective on how you budget and where the money is spent would be helpful but I understand and respect that finding a way to explain can be challenging.

Hi Kelli! Congrats on your renovation! On the blog, I probably won’t be saying overall what our cost was on every little detail or the cost of the whole project. But, I’ll definitely give tips for how we saved money, etc. I might talk about how much money we saved by choosing a certain thing. The main reason for not giving full financial disclosure is that my situation is a little different. My husband is GC’ing the whole project so that saves money, but that isn’t something everyone wants to do. Also, the nature of my job changes it some too. I’ll be working with some brands on certain parts so that affects our cost as well. I’m happy to talk specifics or answer any questions you may have, though! Just shoot me any e-mail and we can talk more about it 🙂

I’m so excited for this.
I have two ideas: first of all- I would line up the laundry wall with the columns if you do them. Visually it will be happier!
And also- what about a barn door for the office nook? It could push out of the way in front of the laundry wall and be a focal point/art whether it was open or closed.

These are great ideas, Jenn! Unfortunately, I can’t line up the columns with laundry because then the dining room would only be 6 feet in width or the opening in the front room will be super small ;( I wish I could! I may not do the columns, but want some way to separate dining space and hallway.

If you end up not doing the columns, you could hang a long narrow window (stained glass or otherwise) from the ceiling along the line where the invisible dining room “wall” is located. (Think the long multi-paned windows that would typically go above a double door in an entryway). If you hang it high enough, you would still be able to walk under it, but it would give the illusion of a wall and create the feeling of a separate space. Plus, it functions as art, too.

We have a pony wall that separates our living room from the dining room and foyer and it is just fabulous. Doesn’t interfere with sight lines in any way, but gives something to put furniture against, put junk on top of (I line stuff “to be put away later” on top of it). I think just a suggestion of pony wall, perhaps where the columns go, separating dining area from hallway would work for you.. My pony wall is about hip-high and I’d install it again in any other house.

This is a really smart transformation of the house. I like how you thought about the cross of the hallway. I think that’s an important element that will make the house feel comfortable and well-laid out. Is the basement usable space? Do you see this as being phase 1 and still working towards this being a someday forever house?

Hi Julia! Thanks so much for your kind compliments. I love the cross hallway too. It just feels like it easily connects all of the important spaces and will create a good flow. Hopefully it’ll work out that way! Unfortunately, the basement isn’t usable. There is some standing room, but it’s mainly a crawl space. My husband is going to use it as his shed, though, which saves us from having to buy one! We really have no idea about our future in this house 🙂 We definitely plan to be here for awhile, but aren’t making plans beyond that. We love to renovate so much that I don’t know if it’ll be a “forever” house just because I think we might crave a new project at some point. Granted, this is our absolute ideal area and house, so we may decide to stay and just find our projects elsewhere. We did consider our Phase II renovation plan when making these plans just in case 🙂 That way we know it would be an option to add on what we’d like to this current layout.

my husband and I are currently renovating our home – a 1940, 1050 sq ft house with an identical floor plan. Thanks for sharing your floor plan! That definitely gives us some ideas!
Question: I noticed you have the asbestos siding – will y’all be keeping it or having it removed? We have the same siding (which isn’t in the best shape) and are interested to hear how others have handled it…

Good luck on your renovation, Jessica! I’m so glad this gave you some ideas 🙂 Our current plan (that we’re still working out) is to lay Hardie Board straight over it. Most of the renovated and flipped homes in our neighborhood have all done that. Apparently, the main issue with it comes from not being on your house, but taking it down, cutting into it, and breathing the dust. So, our goal is to leave it alone as much as we can. We’ll have to deal with it some for change in windows and doors, though.

Amanda, I definitely want to do French doors! I’m not sure we’ll have enough clearance for it and we can’t justify adding on several feet (at several thousand dollars cost) for it, but I’m hoping to fit it in. It would be so much better!

I think you have great visualization for your home. We had a builder when we built ours, and I certainly would have changed a few things once we lived in the space for a while. The laundry room could have been much bigger as we walk from the garage into empty hall space. But I have a lovely laundry room anyway. Too many people get “nit-picky” in the building process or thereafter. I count my blessings that God blessed us with this. Our home is peaceful, tranquil, and perfect for us. Not perfect, but perfect for us. It doesn’t mean I don’t change things up periodically, but I an content and thankful for what I have.

These changes seem perfect. It’s amazing what a few more rooms can do to a little 700 sq ft house. At a young age (we’re young too) it’s smart to think about the future and if you want to stay or not. I know it’s going to be lovely!

Hi Haley! Great question! I really wanted to keep that little hallway intact to feel like a hallway, if that makes sense. This little wall mirrors the hallway wall on the other side. Plus, it gives a little wall space for the closet door to open up against 🙂 Good to know about those columns! I keep going back and forth because I want to make sure they’re not out in the middle of the space, but I really want that room to feel separate. We’ll see!